Thursday, September 20, 2007

Jena 6

Today in Jena, LA there is expected to be a gathering of at least 50,000 to protest the arrest and imprisonment of 6 black students who beat up a white student this past December. Read the story here. CapCity wrote a piece in her blog recently concerning this case and asked her readers to support the "Jena 6" by wearing black to support the students. I posted a comment on her site that was more like a post:

"I'll wear some black that day and I will pass along the story which has gotten little to no coverage here in the Northeast. (I Googled Jena 6 and read about 10 articles on the case.)I can't say that I condone violence of any kind including the beating of the white boy, but I can't say with a clear conscience that I wouldn't have done the same (I've done worse for less, we beat up people who wore orange on Saint Patty's Day because Orange symbolizes the Orange Order which marches through Catholic Belfast neighborhood's each summer to commemorate William of Oranges slaughter of the Irish 400 years ago. This is the cause of many of the riots in Northern Ireland during the past 40 years) I might actually kill if I were Black and saw nooses hanging in my or my children's school yard. I grew up in Boston during the early 70's when there was forced busing and the desegregation of schools. I don't agree with desegregation per say, but what the fuck is it with all the white kids hang here and all the black kids hang here? A white tree? Black bleachers? WTF!!!! Its 2007 and this shit is still an issue!?!My mother in law lives in Mississippi and segregation is alive and well. Its fucked up, but its the way everyone likes it Black and White alike. We should take some of that 10 billion per month we are spending on the war and we should have an empathic curriculum developed in all public schools which focuses on the struggles of every group that has come to the US, then exercise some good old American propaganda and emphasise that we are all Americans and not a country of separate, but equal people. We all live here and breathe the same air and watch the same shitty TV and eat the same crappy food which causes us to access the same dreadful health care and should focus on togetherness and the future of the good ol' USA. I just erased three more paragraphs because I realized that this was becoming a post not a comment."

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 6:50:00 PMThis case was highlighted on the "Today" show this morning as well as the "Boston Globe" and my local paper. We need to dissolve this separate, but equal society we live in. 99% of our existence as human beings has nothing to do with the color of our skin, the god or gods we pray to or the country we live in. The majority of our time here on earth is managing our interpersonal relationships in order to meet our own individual needs (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs).

People need to focus on themselves as individuals and not as the member of a group.

This contradicts slightly my heat of the moment statement ("We all live here and breathe the same air and watch the same shitty TV and eat the same crappy food which causes us to access the same dreadful health care and should focus on togetherness and the future of the good ol' USA. ") , but when the majority of people who immigrated to America (of their own free will), it was as individuals, separated from family, friends and birth-country.

Individual thought and individual actions are as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.

That said, the rest of the world views us as a bunch of money grubbing, arrogant, loud, opinionated, violent thugs who have no morals or sense of their place in the world. Whatever skin color you have, this is the world view of us and as long as we continue to have inequities like those in Jena, violent acts like those in Jena and segregated tribalism like that practiced in Jena then we are a country of hypocrites.

I fucking hate hypocrites.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."Thomas Paine

first, i'm delighted that i inspired you to repost the post you left in my comments;-). but, seriously - sometimes i do feel like i live in a Hatfields vs. McCoys type of situation where this race "war" is so old no one knows where or why it started. But, one thing is for sure, it's a war that is perpetuated by IGNORANCE!

Great post! I was a psychology major and Maslow was one of my favorites, so it was great seeing his Heirarchy here. Imagine what a beautiful world it could be if we could get beyond all the ignorance and violence to the point where we all were trying to help each other self-actualize.